Along those same lines, here’s a far more urgent reason — even if less juicy than the vision of a UN envoy for aliens — to ask whether the Obama administration is doing anything at all to mind the mess at the UN shop in Vienna.

At the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, as 2010-2011 chair of the IAEA’s governing body, UN member states have just picked an envoy of …wait for it …. Pakistan.

Yes, that’s right. Pakistan: the country that not so long ago brought the world the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation bazaar, the country that spawned the Taliban and continues to breed jihadi terrorists, the country that holds out its hand for billions in aid while pouring resources into the ability to produce yet more nuclear weapons. Behold, Ladies and Gentlemen, with crisis upon us over the Iranian nuclear bomb program, the North Korean nuclear bomb, and rumblings of a further proliferation breakout — from Venezuela to East Asia to the Middle East — the IAEA’s prime decision-making body, its 35-member governing board, as of today is chaired for the next year by one of Pakistan’s longtime nuclear insiders, Ansar Parvez of Pakistan.

Reportedly, the Obama administration did nothing to stop Pakistan winning the chairmanship of the IAEA governing board. The U.S. sits on the IAEA governing board. But according to Reuters, U.S. officials nodded along, just as they did this past spring when Iran won a seat on the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Reuters reports : “No country opposed Pakistan’s nomination by a group of Middle Eastern and south Asian member states at a meeting of the IAEA governors.” Citing an anonymous diplomat who attended the session, Reuters reports that the choice of Pakistan was approved “by acclamation.”

BELLEVUE, Wash., Sept. 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The appointment of anti-gun rights former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels as an alternate representative to the United Nations has removed any doubt about the Obama administration's intentions regarding global gun control initiatives, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

Nickels, a founding member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the author of Seattle's failed attempt to override Washington's state firearms preemption statute, was sworn in Wednesday to "help represent the United States in the UN assembly," according to the Seattle Times.

"Putting an extremist gun banner in any position to represent this country at the United Nations amounts to renting a billboard for advertising against the Second Amendment," said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. "While he was Seattle's mayor, Greg Nickels supported every anti-gun scheme put forth by Washington CeaseFire, the Northwest's most active gun prohibition lobby.

"Nickels is a gun ban proponent," he continued, "so his appointment as an alternate to the UN is a clear signal of Barack Obama's intention to rubber stamp the UN's global gun ban agenda. We had to sue Nickels while he was still Seattle's mayor to overturn his illegal city parks gun ban. Now he gets to push his anti-gun philosophy on a world scale. It hardly seems a coincidence that Nickels has been appointed by the Obama administration at a time when the UN is considering treaties and initiatives that pose a serious threat to the Second Amendment."

Nickels was turned out of office in 2009, which was something of a feat in a liberal enclave like Seattle, Gottlieb recalled. His defeat in the primary demonstrated the degree of alienation voters felt from a politician who once epitomized the Seattle liberal establishment.

"By naming Greg Nickels as an alternate representative at the UN," Gottlieb stated, "President Obama has essentially told America's 85 million gun owners that their firearm civil rights are in jeopardy. Nickels cannot be counted on to defend the Second Amendment because he would like to see it erased from the Constitution."

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.

U.N. Human Rights Council Takes Aim at New Target: United StatesBy George Russell

Published November 05, 2010

FoxNews.com

The United Nations Human Rights Council, a conclave of 47 nations that includes such notorious human rights violators as China, Cuba, Libya and Saudi Arabia, met in Geneva on Friday, to question the United States about its human rights failings.

It heard, among other things, that the U.S. discriminates against Muslims, that its police are barbaric and that it has been holding political prisoners behind bars for years.

Russia urged the U.S. to abolish the death penalty. Cuba and Iran called on Washington to close Guantanamo prison and investigate alleged torture by its troops abroad. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, told it must better promote religious tolerance. Mexico complained that racial profiling had become a common practice in some U.S. states.

Some of these allegations, and many more, come from Americans themselves — especially from a stridently critical network of U.S. organizations whose input dominates the U.N. digest of submissions from “civil society” that are part of the council’s background reading.

For the first time ever, the U.S. came under the Human Rights Council’s microscope as part of the its centerpiece activity, the “Universal Periodic Review,” a rotating examination of the human rights failings and strong points of every country in the world, from North Korea to Norway, by the council's members.

For two hours, council members got to say whatever they wish, good and ill, about the country that has done the most in the past 40 years to establish human rights as a global theme.

The anticipation was that that ill-wishers were planning to pack the line to the speaker’s podium, with complaints from some Western human rights organizations that Cuba, Venezuela and Iran were seeking to “hijack” the microphone and stack the speaker’s list with U.S. critics.

But what really is under review is the gamble by the Obama administration to join the council in the first place, rather than shun it in disdain, as the Bush administration did, along with its predecessor, the U.N. Human Rights Commission, because of its roster of despotic members and unbridled antagonism toward Israel.

The Universal Periodic Review, in which all countries great and small submit to human rights commentary by their peers, is supposed to help install the principle of observing human rights in the farthest reaches of the international community.

But it was also a one-sided fiasco, along the lines of such previous toxic human rights extravaganzas as the U.N.’s 2001 “World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,” and its 2006 follow-up, which turned into orgies of anti-Israeli posturing and helped to lead to the previous U.N. Human Rights Commission crackup.

So who is supposed to benefit from the U.S. submission to the UPR process?

According to Jim Kelly, director of international affairs for the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and founder of a blog called Global Governance Watch, the main beneficiaries are likely to be the interest groups that take part in the exercise. “The fact is, they are demanding that the U.S. comply with rights that are already addressed by our own democratic system and laws,” he argues. “They are simply trying to get us to adopt U.N. standards instead of our own. It’s not as if by our participating in the human rights process Cuba is going to clean up its act.”

But according to the U.S. State Department, which led a delegation of high-level American diplomats and government officials to Geneva, the Periodic Review is a major opportunity for Washington to lead the rest of the world by example.

“Our taking the process seriously contributes to the universality” of the human rights process, one State Department official told Fox News. “It’s an important opportunity for us to showcase our willingness to expose ourselves in a transparent way” to human rights criticism.

“For us, upholding the process is very important.”

The same official, however, declared that the “most important” part of the process is “the dialogue with our own citizens.”

That was a reference to the important—and often harshly critical—role being played in the U.S. Universal Periodical Review by American human rights interest groups, or Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), also known in U.N. parlance as “stakeholders.”

The Obama administration has gone to elaborate lengths to consult with such groups in advance of the Geneva meeting. The State Department, has led delegations from a variety of government departments (including Labor, Homeland Security, Education and Justice) to consult with such groups in Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, Harlem, and Albuquerque, according to an official at State.

Those NGOs will also get a chance to “engage” with the U.S. delegation in Geneva at what the State Department calls a “first ever town hall meeting,” after the Human Rights Council, composed of national governments, makes its views known. “Many countries stack the room with NGOs that are government controlled,” the State Department official told Fox News, adding that the U.S. obviously doesn’t.

“We hope that the Periodic Review process will be one that sheds new light on issues,” the official added, including “what we learn from our own NGOs, which we take seriously.”

How seriously the NGOs should be taken is indeed, an important part of the question surrounding the human rights tableau in Geneva. For one thing, 103 submissions by those NGOS about U.S. human rights practices—very broadly defined—are already included in the official documentation of the Universal Periodic Review itself.

In that sense, their contents provide a kind of rough road map to the rhetoric that the U.S. may face in the days—and even years—ahead, because the Universal Periodic Review process will be repeated indefinitely into the future, and is supposed to analyze progress from session to session.

According to a dense summary of the submissions circulated by the U.N. in advance of Friday's meeting, the NGOs offering briefs for this Review run a familiar gamut from the American Bar Association and British-based Amnesty International to such specialized groups as the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission.

They also include an array of submissions from college legal faculties and their advocacy offshoots; environmental coalitions; and a smattering of other non-American organizations such as the Federation of Cuban Women, based in the Castro dictatorship. (The women’s group objects on human rights grounds to the U.S. embargo against Cuba.)

Even relatively conservative and centrist organizations are represented in submissions by the Heritage Foundation, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, and the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty.

CLICK HERE FOR THE U.N. SUMMARY OF SUBMISSIONS

Yet despite their apparent diversity, many of the submissions, as summarized briefly in the U.N. document, point to a number of common themes:

--The U.S. needs to sign, ratify and implement a wide number of United Nations-sponsored human rights conventions, whatever reservations various U.S. governments or courts have had to them;

-- All these treaties and conventions should be “self-executing,” meaning that no subsequent U.S. government action should be required for them to go into effect—regardless of the U.S. constitutional separation of powers, and the separation of powers between federal and state governments;

--the U.S. should have national human rights institutions to coordinate and enforce human rights compliance;

--racial, economic and social disparities are still endemic in the U.S. despite its own civil rights laws, and need to be eliminated to meet “international standards” embodied in U.N. treaties. Amnesty International, for example, charges that “racial disparities continue to exist at every stage [U.S.] in the criminal justice system,” and calls for laws to bar “racial profiling in law enforcement.”

The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, an offshoot of New York University’s law school, goes further, and argues that since 9/11, “the U.S. has institutionalized discriminatory profiling against members of Muslim, Arab, South Asian and Middle-Eastern communities.” The organization calls for federal laws against profiling “on all grounds, with no exceptions for national security and an in-depth audit of government databases/watchlists.”

--barbaric treatment of citizens by U.S. police is allegedly rife. Again according to Amnesty, U.S. police and custody officials “are rarely prosecuted for abuses,” prison conditions “remain harsh in many states,” and “electroshock weapons are widely used against individuals who do not pose a serious threat, including children, the elderly and people under the influence of drink or drugs.”

--U.S. social conditions are dismal. One submission claims, according to the U.N. summary, that 30% of the U.S. population “lacks an adequate income to meet basic needs,” while another notes that “there is an unequal access in the U.S. to basic amenities such as adequate food, shelter, work, healthcare and education. There is also a lack of affordable housing, job shortages and income insecurity, particularly among minorities and women.”

-- native peoples on American soil are badly neglected and need the protection of international treaties, and the U.S. treats immigrants and asylum-seekers badly. At least one organization recommends a ban on deporting indigenous peoples from anywhere in the Americas.

The sheer welter and volume of accusations, recriminations and prescriptions aimed at the U.S. that are embedded in the U.N. summary, however, obscures one important fact—an extraordinary number of them, Fox News has discovered, come from just a single source out of the 103 submissions cited in the U.N. document.

Indeed, no fewer than 60 of 162 footnote citations in the summary—37 percent of the entire total-- refer to a back-up document from a single organization, known as the U.S. Human Rights Network, or USHRN.

The 60 footnotes often cite other submissions as well, but no other organization contributing in the Human Rights Council summary comes close to USHRN as a source for accusations against U.S. behavior. (The energetic Amnesty International, by contrast, finishes in second place with just 23 footnote citations.)

Which raises the question: what, exactly, is the U.S. Human Rights Network?

According to its 423-page submission to the Geneva meeting—actually, 23 separate position papers bound together with a 15 page “overarching report,” or executive summary, USHRN was formed in 2003 as a “new model for U.S.-based human rights advocacy.”

Its intention is to “raise awareness of the human rights network within the broader social justice movement, to create linkages between traditional human rights and social justice organizations, and to facilitate sharing of information and resources among a broader network of activists.”

USHNR’s website is a little more specific: it is an agglomeration of nearly 300 activist organizations whose ultimate aim, “full U.S. compliance with universal human rights standards—will require the development of a broad-based, democratic movement that is dedicated to the long-term goal of transforming U.S. political culture.”

Funding for the network and its Geneva submission apparently comes from the Human Rights Fund, an umbrella group whose steering committee of philanthropies include the Ford Foundation, George Soros’ Open Society Institute, the Overbrook Foundation and an anonymous donor.

Among the network’s membership are some prominent and familiar organizations: the American Friends Service Committee, Fordham University Law Center, the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights.

But most of USHNR’s members are a hodge-podge of relatively unknown and local organizations, like the St. Louis-based Organization for Black Struggle, the Progressive Action Alliance (“a group of progressives in the southeast Texas area”), the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, and many more.

Some of them are also apparently non-American, like Rebuild Green, whose own website is entirely in German.

What they apparently share, according to their mammoth Human Rights Council submission, is a militant vision of the U.S. as a malignant force. “In the years since UNHRN’s inception,” the document declares, “constitutional protections for U.S. citizens and non-citizens have diminished, economic conditions for working and poor people in the U.S. have deteriorated, and repression has increased.”

Several of the position papers included in the submission are a lot more militant than that, and also seem to emerge from some radical left-wing time tunnel. One of the papers, entitled “Political Repression—Political Prisoners,” harks back to the 1970s to indict the FBI through Operation COINTELPRO for “maiming, murdering, false prosecutions and frame-ups, destruction and mayhem throughout the country.”

It cites the Feds for targeting such far-left organizations as the Puerto Rican Independence Front, the Black Panther Party, the Weather Underground, the American Indian Movement, the Black Liberation Army, as well as “peace activists and everyone in between,” and says that “many of today’s political prisoners” in the U.S. were jailed indefinitely as a result. That repression has increased, the paper argues since 9/11.

The political repression paper demands an “immediate criminal investigation into the conspiracy,” and also new trials for two now-aged left-wing activists jailed on murder charges, Mumia Abu Jamal and Leonard Peltier.

The repression paper was authored by the National Conference of Black Lawyers and the Malcolm X Center for Self Determination, neither of which are listed among USHRN’s member organizations. It is endorsed by a host of other organizations, however, including at least that is not only a USHRN member, but is also cited in the U.N. summary as the author of a separate submission to the Periodic Review. This seems to indicate that USHRN’s collective viewpoint is being augmented by other, nominally independent contributors to the Review.

Yet another position paper, on “The Continuum of Domestic Repression” in the U.S., asserts that “today, police still routinely make unfounded mass arrests and detentions to keep people off the streets and out of the eye of the media which tends to be accommodating.” It further condemns the use of high-security detention measures against terrorists such as Sayed Fahad Hashmi , a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen who pled guilty this year to conspiracy for providing support to Al Qaeda. Hashmi, the paper says, was held in high-security custody for three years. The paper says such treatment is “typical of how terrorism suspects are being treated in U.S. prisons and courts.”

The “Continuum” paper was submitted by the African American Institute for Policy Studies & Planning, the October 22 Coalition, and the Ida B. Wells Media Institute. None of them are listed on the USHRN website as member organizations.

However, an organization called the Afrikan Amerikan Institute for Policy Studies and Planning, Inc., which calls itself “a volunteer Grassroots, community based think tank created more than 10 years ago,” and is based in Greenville, South Carolina, claims on its website that the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination, co-author of the other repression paper in the USHRN portfolio, is one of its projects. The Coordinator/President-CEO of the Afrikan Amerikan Institute is Efia Nwangaza, a onetime Green Party candidate for the U.S. Senate.

On its website, the Oct. 22 Coalition gives its full name as “The October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation.” According to its website, its birth “came out of conversations” among a group of radical activists, including a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Since 1996, the Coalition has organized national days of protest annually on its name day, and uses a post office box in New York’s East Village as a focal point for organizing. (The October 22 date, the website says, does not have a “significance in its own right.” The protesters wanted a day when “students would be back in school, and before the elections.”)

The USHRN position paper on U.S. labor relations, however, was submitted by much better-known mainstream organizations. Among them: the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, the United Steelworkers and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). None are listed as USHRN members.

Among other things, the labor paper points to declining U.S. union membership as a function of discriminatory U.S. labor laws, including the National Labor Relations Act, and declares that “core internationally established labor rights are not adequately protected by state and federal laws that govern the American workplace” and adds that “workers have resorted to international fora to seek redress.”

It says that corporate harassment, threats, unlawful interrogations and retaliatory firings are “standard practice” in U.S. union organizing, and calls on the U.S. to obey “pertinent international instruments” to, among other things, adopt the Employee Free Choice Act, commonly known as “card check,” to ensure all workers get full federal and state labor law protection “regardless of migration status.” It also calls on U.S. governments give broader latitude to allowing public sector labor strikes.

The sheer expanse of the USHRN effort virtually guaranteed it would have a major impact on the U.N.’s summary documentation for the November 5 Periodic Review—and so, apparently, did the Network’s heavy participation in the State Department’s cross-country “consultations” in the lead-up to the review.

In an acknowledgement at the front of the document USHRN executive director Ajamu Baraka, lauds two of his workers for efforts across the country where they “continually held the State Department to its commitments even though corralling federal officials was not part of their job description.”

Baraka himself is no stranger to strenuous efforts on behalf of his causes. A onetime director of Amnesty International USA’s southern regional director and head of its anti-death penalty campaign, he has been described as “a veteran grassroots organizer with roots in the Black Liberation movement, anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles.”

Personally hailed, according to various reports, by then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, as a human rights activist, Baraka was also listed in May 2000 as an attendee of the first U.N. preparatory committee meeting to lay the groundwork for the Durban World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. He apparently attended as a delegate of the World Peace Council, an organization created in the early days of the Cold War, and which now describes itself as “an anti-imperialist, democratic, independent and non-aligned international movement of mass action.”

More prorgressism towards the ultimate goal of one world government with you guessed it, the ONE in charge:

Susan Rice kicks off U.N. series“Because of the U.N., the world doesn’t look to America to solve every problem alone. … We’re far better off working to strengthen the U.N. than trying to starve it — and then having to choose between filling the void ourselves, or leaving real threats untended.”“The U.N. provides a real return on our tax dollars by bringing 192 countries together to share the cost of providing stability, vital aid and hope in the world’s most broken places,” Rice said in prepared remarks.

Exactly assbackwards. The UN should be kept, downsized and de-emphasized. If America hosts it, these dignitaries like Ahmadinejad and Chavez should visit Peoria or Sioux Falls instead of NYC with all its distractions. If the US gets one seat and one vote, then the US pays one share - whatever Djibouti is paying. It should exist as a discussion and networking hall, not a voting or governing body, or a taxing authority.

We should know now if not sooner that we don't have friends or reliable allies and neither do they. We sometimes have other nations who at the moment share a common interest on a particular matter. We need open communications with all these players. Skype is more cost effective.

"f we are to be told by a foreign Power ... what we shall do, and what we shall not do, we have Independence yet to seek, and have contended hitherto for very little." --George Washington

Consistent with his socialist, we-are-all-one agenda, Barack Obama used a non-unanimous 10-vote nod from the United Nations Security Council to justify commencing hostilities against Libya, bypassing Congress, the Constitution, the will of the American public and a couple hundred years' worth of precedents. Since none of these have mattered in the past, why should they now? After all, in the mind of Obama -- or "Our Son, His Excellency" as his erstwhile pal Moammar Gadhafi called him recently -- UN authority supersedes U.S. constitutional authority and sovereignty.

To be sure, a long list of reasons support America's desire to oust Gadhafi and his regime, especially his role in state-sponsored terrorism. It was Gadhafi that ordered the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270, most of whom were Americans. That said, a number of countervailing arguments counsel against intervening in Libya's civil war with this, as Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes euphemistically put it, "kinetic military action." This description was later revised by Press Secretary Jay Carney to "time-limited, scope-limited" military action. That clears things up.

For one, it is a civil war. U.S. policy -- at least ostensibly -- has been to refrain from engaging in conflicts where U.S. vital national interests are not at stake. Whatever interests the U.S. has in Libya, the term "vital" certainly does not apply.

Second, as a sovereign nation, the U.S. neither seeks nor is granted authority from a supra-national organization such as the UN to use American instruments of national power, including military force. Such authority must vest from within, and in the U.S. that mechanism is the Constitution. While the president has both the authority and duty to use force in protection of the United States from an actual or imminent attack, that is the extent of his unilateral authority. Congress alone has the authority to approve the use of military force in all other circumstances as it did in the wake of 9/11. In the case of both Afghanistan and Iraq, President George W. Bush specifically approached Congress, asked for and was granted a resolution authorizing the use of military force. His successor -- not so much.

Next, we have no idea whether the regime that replaces Gadhafi (if that happens) will actually be a change for the better. While the words "democracy" and "freedom" are bandied about indiscriminately, no one knows what Libya will look like post-Gadhafi. In fact, the rebels are self-described Islamic "holy warriors" who have at least the verbal backing of al-Qa'ida. This fact alone should advocate for restraint.

Moreover, as America nears the tenth anniversary of 9/11, we should pause to reflect upon the fact that our nation has been at war continuously for almost a decade. Should we -- or can we even afford to -- embark on a third commitment of manpower and resources, much less one that is undefined and open-ended? Supposedly, no "boots on the ground" were to be committed, but as we go to press 2,200 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit are stationed just off the Libyan coast. In the first few days of this conflict alone, we have already lost a plane and spent hundreds of Tomahawk missiles -- are we prepared to commit to this effort to the point that we're willing to sacrifice American lives as well?

In 2007, both Barack Obama and his levelheaded sidekick Joe Biden believed that the president's authority to use military force is limited to repelling an imminent or ongoing attack on the U.S., and that Congress alone has the authority to authorize the use of military force in all other circumstances. "The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation," said Barack Obama then. Likewise, Joe Biden chimed in, "I made it clear to the president that if he takes this nation to war without congressional approval, I will make it my business to impeach him. That is a fact."

These claims were made when they were "Candidate Obama" and "Senator Biden," respectively -- that is, before either decided that their heartfelt words on the campaign trail or a TV talk show were never meant to be applied to themselves at some future point.

Finally, it's worth highlighting how utterly disagreeable is the military operation label "Odyssey Dawn." An odyssey is a very long, convoluted saga -- not an event wrapped up in a few days, as this effort has been promoted, thus far. We're hoping that the Pentagon has a good sense of humor and irony. Otherwise and unwittingly, it may have aptly coined the beginning of yet another endless military journey. It might be nice to rid the world of Moammar Gadhafi. But before we commit American lives and resources toward doing so, shouldn't we first pause to ask the question: At what cost?

Quote of the Week"We don't know whether the current U.S. president is mindful of what he is uttering, or if he is unconscious and confused." --Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei

Obama’s U.N. Debacle The Obama administration’s big hopes of reforming the Human Rights Council from within are in shreds.

President Obama’s decision to place the United Nations at the center of his foreign policy took another hit Friday as the U.N. Human Rights Council ended its latest session in Geneva. One of the president’s primary justifications for joining the notorious council shortly after he assumed office was its mandatory five-year review process; if the U.S. was a member, the administration claimed, it could influence this process. The process, which quietly unfolded in back rooms in Geneva over the past six months, has been exposed to be a total fraud, taking the administration’s cover down with it.

Starting last fall, the Obama team was a very active participant in a working group of the council that had been set up to tackle reform. At the end of February, the working group produced a document summarizing its decisions, and on Friday the council passed a resolution adopting that document by consensus — that is, without a vote. Regardless of the fact that every serious recommendation of the United States was rejected, Obama’s diplomats refused to call for a vote on the resolution so that they could vote against it.

They did play a little game intended to fool uninformed listeners by claiming to “dissociate” the administration from the resolution. However, since the resolution has been adopted by consensus, it will proceed unimpeded to the General Assembly, where it will be rubber-stamped. The U.S. could not have stopped the resolution, but an American vote against the measure would have been a major blow to the credibility of the Human Rights Council. It also would have set up the U.S. to leave the council as a logical consequence of the failure to reform it.

The slap in the face to President Obama is painfully clear from a short list of American demands for reform and the council’s responses.

The council has an official, permanent agenda that governs all its meetings and consists of only ten items. One of those items is reserved for condemning Israel, and another is assigned to human rights in the other 191 U.N. member states. This session, for instance, produced six resolutions condemning Israel, one resolution each on four other states, and nothing at all on the remaining 187 countries. The American delegation huffed and puffed that this obvious discrimination — which characterizes every meeting of the council — must come to an end, and proposed that the two agenda items be rolled into one. The proposal was rejected.

The American delegation proposed creating easier trigger mechanisms for convening special sessions on specific countries when serious human-rights concerns arise. The proposal was rejected.

The American delegation proposed abolishing the council’s make-work “Advisory Committee.” It is currently populated by such human-rights luminaries as former Sandinista leader and suspended priest Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann. (Brockmann once served as president of the U.N. General Assembly and is best remembered for a series of anti-Semitic outbursts and for coming down off his podium to hug Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.) The proposal was rejected.

The American delegation proposed making public pre-screened complaints of gross and systematic violations of human rights that are received by the council. Specific cases, which have poured into the U.N. for over half a century from poor souls around the world, have never been revealed. The proposal was rejected.

The American delegation proposed expanding the time allocated to discussions of abuses in specific countries. The proposal was rejected.

The American delegation proposed that states running for a seat on the council should engage in a public dialogue with General Assembly members on their human-rights record, as measured by specific criteria. The proposal was rejected.

In all, the U.N. reports that 42 proposals were put forward by the American delegation orally and in writing. Only three were accepted. Those three addressed minutiae. For instance, the Obama team proposed allowing all states that wish to speak during the council’s “universal periodic review” (UPR) to be permitted to do so. The UPR is the procedure in which the council considers the human-rights record of every state, but the council tightly controls the time spent on each country. Council members are allotted three minutes’ and non-members two minutes’ worth of comments, regardless of the scope of the issues. Since the total time is fixed, would-be commentators are frequently silenced by ending up too low on the speakers’ list. The “reform” that was proposed and accepted? Keep the total time the same and reduce the allotted time per speaker. Thirty-second critiques of human-rights abuses, here we come.

Instead of admitting their complete inability to accomplish their mission of reforming the council, however, Obama’s representatives are scrambling to sweep the disaster under the rug. Admitting their error would no doubt strike at the heart of the president’s U.N. chorus line.

On March 31, 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.N. ambassador Susan Rice announced that the U.S. would seek to join the council “because we believe that working from within, we can make the Council a more effective forum,” and because “the Council . . . is scheduled to undergo a formal review of its structure and procedures in 2011, which will offer a significant opportunity for Council reform.” In a New York Times op-ed on Sept. 13, 2010, Eileen Donahoe — the United States’ ambassador to the council — called the review “a serious self-reflection exercise” and claimed that “if we do not sit at the table with others and do the work necessary to influence the process, U.S. values and priorities will not be reflected in the outcome.”

Now we know there was no “serious self-reflection.” U.S. values and priorities have not been reflected in the outcome. The reform opportunity is in shreds.

The result leaves the administration with two choices. Choice number one: Admit the fiasco. Refuse to lend legitimacy to a highly discriminatory agency designed to help members such as Saudi Arabia, China, and Cuba conceal their own abuses. And get out. Choice number two: Allow a bogus “reform” to be adopted by consensus, and stay put.

President Obama has evidently decided to take the second course, sending one more signal about how little he values Israel and how few are the number of human-rights victims around the world that stand any chance of capturing his attention.

— Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, director of the Touro College Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, and the editor of www.EYEontheUN.org.

http://blogs.forbes.com/larrybell/2011/06/07/u-n-agreement-should-have-all-gun-owners-up-in-arms/Larry BellJun. 7 2011 - 2:04 pm It may not come as surprising news to many of you that the United Nations doesn’t approve of our Second Amendment. Not one bit. And they very much hope to do something about it with help from some powerful American friends. Under the guise of a proposed global “Small Arms Treaty” premised to fight “terrorism”, “insurgency” and “international crime syndicates” you can be quite certain that an even more insidious threat is being targeted – our Constitutional right for law-abiding citizens to own and bear arms.What, exactly, does the intended agreement entail?

While the terms have yet to be made public, if passed by the U.N. and ratified by our Senate, it will almost certainly force the U.S. to:

Enact tougher licensing requirements, creating additional bureaucratic red tape for legal firearms ownership. Confiscate and destroy all “unauthorized” civilian firearms (exempting those owned by our government of course). Ban the trade, sale and private ownership of all semi-automatic weapons (any that have magazines even though they still operate in the same one trigger pull – one single “bang” manner as revolvers, a simple fact the ant-gun media never seem to grasp). Create an international gun registry, clearly setting the stage for full-scale gun confiscation. In short, overriding our national sovereignty, and in the process, providing license for the federal government to assert preemptive powers over state regulatory powers guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment in addition to our Second Amendment rights Have no doubt that this plan is very real, with strong Obama administration support. In January 2010 the U.S. joined 152 other countries in endorsing a U.N. Arms Treaty Resolution that will establish a 2012 conference to draft a blueprint for enactment. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged to push for Senate ratification.

Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton has cautioned gun owners to take this initiative seriously, stating that the U.N. “is trying to act as though this is really just a treaty about international arms trade between nation states, but there is no doubt that the real agenda here is domestic firearms control.”

More from contributor Larry Bell

Although professing to support the Second Amendment during her presidential election bid, Hillary Clinton is not generally known as a gun rights enthusiast. She has been a long-time activist for federal firearms licensing and registration, and a vigorous opponent of state Right-to-Carry laws. As a New York senator she ranked among the National Rifle Association’s worst “F”-rated gun banners who voted to support the sort of gunpoint disarmament that marked New Orleans’ rogue police actions against law-abiding gun owners in the anarchistic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

President Obama’s record on citizen gun rights doesn’t reflect much advocacy either. Consider for example his appointment of anti-gun rights former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels as an alternate U.S. representative to the U.N., and his choice of Andrew Traver who has worked to terminate civilian ownership of so-called “assault rifles” (another prejudicially meaningless gun term) to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Then, in a move unprecedented in American history, the Obama administration quietly banned the re-importation and sale of 850,000 collectable antique U.S.-manufactured M1 Garand and Carbine rifles that were left in South Korea following the Korean War. Developed in the 1930s, the venerable M1 Garand carried the U.S. through World War II, seeing action in every major battle.

As an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama was an aggressive advocate for expanding gun control laws, and even voted against legislation giving gun owners an affirmative defense when they use firearms to defend themselves and their families against home invaders and burglars. He also served on a 10-member board of directors of the radically activist anti-gun Joyce Foundation in Chicago during a period between 1998-2001when it contributed $18,326,183 in grants to anti-Second Amendment organizations.

If someone breaks into your home when you are there, which would you prefer to have close at hand: 1) a telephone to call 911, or 2) a loaded gun of respectable caliber? That’s a pretty easy question for me to answer. I am a long-time NRA member, concealed firearms license holder and a regular weekly recreational pistol shooter. And while I don’t ordinarily care to target anything that has a mother, will reluctantly make an exception should an urgent provocation arise. I also happen to enjoy the company of friends who hunt, as well as those, like myself, who share an abiding interest in American history and the firearms that influenced it.

There are many like me, and fewer of them would be alive today were it not for exercise of their gun rights. In fact law-abiding citizens in America used guns in self-defense 2.5 million times during 1993 (about 6,850 times per day), and actually shot and killed 2 1/2 times as many criminals as police did (1,527 to 606). Those civilian self-defense shootings resulted in less than 1/5th as many incidents as police where an innocent person was mistakenly identified as a criminal (2% versus 11%).

Just how effectively have gun bans worked to make citizens safer in other countries? Take the number of home break-ins while residents are present as an indication. In Canada and Britain, both with tough gun-control laws, nearly half of all burglaries occur when residents are present. But in the U.S. where many households are armed, only about 13% happen when someone is home.

Recognizing clear statistical benefit evidence, 41 states now allow competent, law-abiding adults to carry permitted or permit-exempt concealed handguns. As a result, crime rates in those states have typically fallen at least 10% in the year following enactment.

So the majority in our Senate is smart enough to realize that the U.N.’s gun-grab agenda is unconstitutional, politically suicidal for those who support it, and down-right idiotic—right? Let’s hope so, but not entirely count on it. While a few loyal Obama Democrats are truly “pro-gun”, many are loathe to vote against treaties that carry the president’s international prestige, causing him embarrassment.

Also, don’t forget that Senate confirmation of anti-gun Obama nominee Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Many within the few who voted against her did so only because of massive grassroots pressure from constituents who take their Constitutional protections very seriously.

Now, more than ever, it’s imperative to stick by our guns in demanding that all Constitutional rights be preserved. If not, we will surely lose both.

CIA Director Leon Panetta, President Obama's nominee to serve as secretary of defense, co-chaired an initiative to regulate U.S. oceans and cede them to United Nations-based international law.

Panetta's oceans initiative was a key partner of an organization that promotes world government called Citizens for Global Solutions.

Also, that group's parent organization, the World Federalist Movement, backs Responsibility to Protect, the controversial military doctrine used by Obama as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya. Billionaire George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, the main center pushing the doctrine. That center includes the World Federalist Movement as one of its members and coordinators.Advertisement

Panetta faces a senate vote this week on whether to confirm him as defense secretary.

Until his appointment as CIA director in 2009, Panetta co-chaired the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, which is the partner of Citizens for Global Solutions in a push to ratify U.S. laws and regulations governing the seas.

The oceans initiative bills itself as a bipartisan, collaborative group that aims to "accelerate the pace of change that results in meaningful ocean policy reform."

Among its main recommendations is that the U.S. should put its oceans up for regulation to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

That UN convention defines the rights and responsibilities of nations in their use of the world's oceans, establishing guidelines for businesses, the environment, and the management of marine natural resources.

The Joint Ocean Commission Initiative Leadership Council includes John Podesta, President and CEO of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress, which is reportedly highly influential in advising the White House on policy.

Panneta's oceans initiative is a key partner of Citizens for Global Solutions, or CGS, which, according to its literature, envisions a "future in which nations work together to abolish war, protect our rights and freedoms and solve the problems facing humanity that no nation can solve alone."

CGS states it works to "build the political will in the United States" to achieve this global vision.

CGS is a member organization and supporter of the World Federalist Movement, which seeks a one-world government. The World Federalist Movement considers the CGS to be its U.S. branch.

The Movement openly brings together organizations and individuals which support the establishment of a global federal system of strengthened and democratized global institutions with plenary constitutional power accountable to the citizens of the world and a division of international authority among separate global agencies.

The Movement's headquarters are located near the UN building in New York City. A second office is near the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.

These locations are significant since the Movement heavily promotes the UN and is the coordinator of various international projects such as the Coalition for the International Criminal Court and the Responsibility to Protect military doctrine.

These latest revelations about Panetta follow a series of articles by this reporter in recent days highlighting possible concerns about Obama's secretary of defense pick.

Those articles exposed that in 1979, Panetta, then a California congressman, keynoted the conference of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, or WILPF, a pro-Soviet, anti-war group during the height of the Cold War.

Panetta also honored the founding member of the WILPF, which was once named by the State Department as a "Soviet front."

Separately, this journalist reported that Panetta once proposed allowing Congress to conduct spot checks, at its discretion, of the CIA - the only government agency that contests the authority of the Congressional comptroller general to audit its activities, citing the covert aspects of its operation.

Also last week, it was reported that Panetta in 1983 served on the fundraising committee of the Institute for Policy Studies, a leftist think tank that has long faced criticism for positions some say attempt to undermine U.S. national security.

The connection of Panetta's oceans initiative to a global center coordinating the Responsibility to Protect doctrine might raise questions regarding Panetta's defense strategy as he faces a vote that is likely to place him at the leadership of the Pentagon.

Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for Internet giant WorldNetDaily.com. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York's 770-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S., every Sunday between 2-4 p.m.

CIA Director Leon Panetta, President Obama's nominee for secretary of defense, co-chaired an initiative to regulate U.S. oceans and cede them to United Nations-based international law.

Panetta's oceans initiative was a key partner of an organization, Citizens for Global Solutions, that promotes world government.

Also, the group’s parent organization, the World Federalist Movement, promotes democratized global institutions with plenary constitutional power. It is a coordinator and member of Responsibility to Protect, the controversial military doctrine used by Obama as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya.

As WND reported, billionaire George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, the main organization pushing the doctrine. The center includes the World Federalist Movement as one of its members and coordinators.

Panetta faces a Senate vote tomorrow on whether to confirm him as defense secretary.

Until his appointment as CIA director in 2009, Panetta co-chaired the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, which is the partner of Citizens for Global Solutions in a push to ratify U.S. laws and regulations governing the seas.

Find out what's needed to restore America to greatness.

The oceans initiative bills itself as a bipartisan, collaborative group that aims to "accelerate the pace of change that results in meaningful ocean policy reform."

(Story continues below)

Among its main recommendations is that the U.S. should put its oceans up for regulation to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

That U.N. convention defines the rights and responsibilities of nations in their use of the world's oceans, establishing guidelines for businesses, the environment and the management of marine natural resources.

The Administration and Congress should establish a national ocean policy. The Administration and Congress should support regional, ecosystem-based approaches to the management of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes.

Congress should strengthen and reauthorize the Coastal Zone Management Act.

Congress should strengthen the Clean Water Act.The Joint Ocean Commission Initiative Leadership Council includes John Podesta, president and CEO of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress, which is reportedly highly influential in advising the White House on policy.

Podesta served as co-chair of Obama's presidential transition team.

Panetta's oceans initiative, meanwhile, is a key partner of Citizens for Global Solutions, or CGS, which, according to its literature, envisions a "future in which nations work together to abolish war, protect our rights and freedoms and solve the problems facing humanity that no nation can solve alone.”

CGS states it works to "build the political will in the United States" to achieve this global vision.

The organization currently works on issues that fall into five general areas: U.S. global engagement; global health and environment; peace and security; international law and justice; and international institutions.

CGS is a member organization and supporter of the World Federalist Movement, which seeks a one-world government. The World Federalist Movement considers the CGS to be its U.S. branch.

The movement openly brings together organizations and individuals that support the establishment of a global federal system of strengthened and democratized global institutions with plenary constitutional power accountable to the citizens of the world and a division of international authority among separate global agencies.

The movement's headquarters are located near the U.N. building in New York City. A second office is near the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.

The locations are significant, since the movement heavily promotes the U.N. and is the coordinator of various international projects, such as the Coalition for the International Criminal Court and the Responsibility to Protect military doctrine.

Marxist ideology

The latest revelations about Panetta follow a series of WND articles in recent days highlighting possible concerns about Obama's secretary of defense pick.

WND reported last week, Panetta keynoted the conference of a pro-Soviet, anti-war group during the height of the Cold War.

Panetta also honored the founding member of the group, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, or WILPF, which was once named by the State Department as a "Soviet front."

WND also reported Panetta once proposed allowing Congress to conduct spot checks at its discretion of the CIA, the only government agency that contests the authority of the congressional comptroller general to audit its activities, citing the covert aspects of its operation.

Also last week, WND reported on Panetta's ties to a pro-Marxist think tank accused of anti-CIA activity.

The Institute for Policy Studies, or IPS, has long faced criticism for positions some say attempt to undermine U.S. national security and for its cozy relationship with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Global military scheme

The connection of Panetta's oceans initiative to a global center coordinating the Responsibility to Protect doctrine might raise questions regarding Panetta's defense strategy as he faces a vote tomorrow that is likely to place him at the leadership of the Pentagon.

In his address to the nation last month, Obama cited the military doctrine as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya.

Indeed, the Libya bombings have been widely regarded as a test of Responsibility to Protect.

Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act, as cited by Obama, is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of "war crimes," "genocide," "crimes against humanity" or "ethnic cleansing."

The term "war crimes" has at times been indiscriminately used by various U.N.-backed international bodies, including the International Criminal Court, or ICC, which applied it to Israeli anti-terror operations in the Gaza Strip. There has been fear the ICC could be used to prosecute U.S. troops.

As WND reported Soros' Open Society Institute is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect.

Soros' Open Society is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Government sponsors include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda and the U.K.

Board members of the group include former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Ireland President Mary Robinson and South African activist Desmond Tutu. Robinson and Tutu have made solidarity visits to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as members of a group called The Elders, which includes former President Jimmy Carter.

Annan once famously stated, "State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined – not least by the forces of globalization and international co-operation. States are ... instruments at the service of their peoples and not vice versa."

The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy served on the advisory board of the 2001 commission that original founded Responsibility to Protect. The center was led at the time by Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights.

She reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya.

WND reported the committee that devised the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine included Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa as well as Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a staunch denier of the Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.

Right to 'penetrate nation-states' borders'

Soros himself outlined the fundamentals of Responsibility to Protect in a 2004 Foreign Policy magazine article entitled "The People's Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can Protect the World's Most Vulnerable Populations."

In the article, Soros said "true sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments."

"If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified," Soros wrote. "By specifying that sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states' borders to protect the rights of citizens.

"In particular, the principle of the people's sovereignty can help solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to delivering aid effectively to sovereign states, and the obstacles to global collective action dealing with states experiencing internal conflict."

'One world'

WND reported that the Responsibility doctrine founder, Ramesh Thakur, recently advocated for a "global rebalancing" and "international redistribution" to create a "New World Order."

In a piece last March in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, "Toward a new world order," Thakur wrote, "Westerners must change lifestyles and support international redistribution."

He was referring there to a United Nations-brokered international climate treaty in which he argued, "Developing countries must reorient growth in cleaner and greener directions."

In the opinion piece, Thakur then discussed recent military engagements and how the financial crisis has impacted the U.S.

"The West's bullying approach to developing nations won't work anymore – global power is shifting to Asia," he wrote.

"A much-needed global moral rebalancing is in train," he added.

Thakur continued: "Westerners have lost their previous capacity to set standards and rules of behavior for the world. Unless they recognize this reality, there is little prospect of making significant progress in deadlocked international negotiations."

Thakur contended "the demonstration of the limits to U.S. and NATO power in Iraq and Afghanistan has left many less fearful of 'superior' western power."

CCP, Panetta isn't even the furthest left of the Obama circle but the confirmation hearings for the Sec. of Defense certainly present a great opportunity to expose and confront these views.

Conservatives and Republicans often want to end federal departments like energy and education. If the Obama campaign had been honest they might have proposed closing the DOD. We shouldn't need to fund a full department in support porous borders, betraying allies and leading the world from behind. Decisions like troops Afghanistan could be handled from the campaign war room eliminating the obvious duplication.

OTTAWA — Canada ought to go a step beyond simply denouncing the ironic appointment of North Korea chairing the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, a leading foreign policy expert said Thursday.

Fen Hampson, the director of Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, suggested Canada temporarily withdraw from the conference as a symbol of dissent.

Given North Korea's track record on nuclear proliferation, at the very least Canada should launch an internal review of the conference which he described as a "Mad Hatter's Tea Party" under the leadership of So Se Pyong.

"This is kind of beyond the pale," Hampson said. "North Korea has clearly shown that it doesn't play by the rules when it comes to arms control and the obligations of member states."

Hampson said it wouldn't be the first time Canada withdrew its UN ambassador under similar circumstances.

*Anyone remember when we had the toughminded foreign policy and Canada had the pathetic socialist economy?

"Renegade nuclear-armed North Korea has taken over as head of a key UN disarmamentbody, despite facing Security Council sanctions over its weapons programs.

The development comes the same week the UN defended its decision to support Iran'sholding an international "anti-terrorism" conference, at which participantsdescribed Western powers as international terrorists.

UN officials say So Sepyong, the North Korean ambassador, becomes president of theGeneva-based Conference on Disarmament (CD) as a result of rules that rotate theposition among its 65 member states in alphabetical order.

But critics said Wednesday the rules should be changed when they allow the CD -whosemandate is in part to push for world nuclear disarmament -to be led by a country theWest considers an international nuclear pariah.

"No system should tolerate such a fundamental conflict of interests," said HillelNeuer, executive director of Geneva-based UN Watch, which also led protests againstthe UN's input at the Iranian conference.

"It's common sense that a disarmament body should not be headed by the world'sarchvillain on illegal weapons and nuclear proliferation, notorious for exportingmissiles and nuclear know-how to fellow rogue regimes around the globe."

Once a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, North Korea pulled out in 2003after violating it. In 2006, it conducted its first nuclear bomb test and isbelieved to have stockpiled up to eight nuclear warheads.

Mr. So said Tuesday he was "very engaged in moving the conference forward" and woulduse his four weeks as president to seek "constructive proposals" that wouldstrengthen the CD's "work and ... credibility."

"That might make sense, if by 'forward' he means toward a nuclear winter, or by'constructive,' he means steering clear of anything that might impede North Korea,"said Anne Bayefsky, head of the New York-based monitoring group, Eye on the UN.

One of the most vocal countries at the group's meetings is Iran, which WilliamHague, the British Foreign Secretary, said Wednesday had just carried out secrettests of ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload in breach of UNresolutions.

Mohammad Hassan Daryaei, Iran's ambassador to the CD, pledged his country's "fullsupport and cooperation" with North Korea as he congratulated the new president.

Marius Grinius, the Canadian envoy, also welcomed North Korea's succession, butadded Ottawa, along with other Western powers, believes the body has beenmarginalized for years. It was "not negotiating anything," and had "not been for avery long time."

While the UN bills the conference as the "single multilateral disarmamentnegotiating forum of the international community," others exist -to the point Mr.Grinius said the CD's inertia may seal its fate.

It was on "life support," he said, and "fast approaching a historic tipping point."

The war in Libya has been under way for months, without any indication of when itmight end. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's faction has been stronger and morecohesive than imagined and his enemies weaker and more divided. This is not unusual.There is frequently a perception that dictators are widely hated and that theirpower will collapse when challenged. That is certainly true at times, but often thepower of a dictator is rooted in the broad support of an ideological faction, anethnic group or simply those who benefit from the regime. As a result, naiveassumptions of rapid regime change are quite often replaced by the reality ofprotracted conflict.

This has been a characteristic of what we have called "humanitarian wars," thoseundertaken to remove a repressive regime and replace it with one that is morerepresentative. Defeating a tyrant is not always easy. Gadhafi did not manage torule Libya for 42 years without some substantial support.

Nevertheless, one would not expect that, faced with opposition from a substantialanti-regime faction in Libya as well as NATO and many other countries, Gadhafi wouldretain control of a substantial part of both the country and the army. Yet when welook at the situation carefully, it should be expected.

The path many expected in Libya was that the support around Gadhafi woulddeteriorate over time when faced with overwhelming force, with substantialdefections of senior leaders and the disintegration of his military as commanderseither went over to the other side en masse, taking their troops with them, orsimply left the country, leaving their troops leaderless. As the deterioration inpower occurred, Gadhafi -- or at least those immediately around Gadhafi -- wouldenter into negotiations designed for an exit. That hasn't happened, and certainlynot to the degree that it has ended Gadhafi's ability to resist. Indeed, while NATOairpower might be able to block an attack to the east, the airstrikes must continuebecause it appears that Gadhafi has retained a great deal of his power.

The International Criminal Court

One of the roots of this phenomenon is the existence of the International CriminalCourt (ICC), which became operational in 2002 in The Hague, Netherlands. The ICC hasjurisdiction, under U.N. mandate, to prosecute individuals who have committed warcrimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity. Its jurisdiction is limited tothose places where recognized governments are unwilling or unable to carry out theirown judicial processes. The ICC can exercise jurisdiction if the case is referred tothe ICC prosecutor by an ICC state party signatory or the U.N. Security Council(UNSC) or if the prosecutor initiates the investigation him or herself.

The current structure of international law, particularly the existence of the ICCand its rules, has an unintended consequence. Rather than serving as a tool forremoving war criminals from power, it tends to enhance their power and removeincentives for capitulation or a negotiated exit. In Libya's case, Gadhafi'sindictment was referred to the ICC by the UNSC, and he was formally indicted in lateJune. The existence of the ICC, and the clause that says that it has jurisdictionwhere signatory governments are unable or unwilling to carry out their ownprosecutions, creates an especially interesting dilemma for Gadhafi and theintervening powers.

Consider the case of Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia. Milosevic, like Gadhafi, wasindicted during a NATO intervention against his country. His indictment was handeddown a month and a half into the air campaign, in May 1999, by the InternationalCriminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), a court that was to be the mold,to a large extent, for the ICC. After the intervention, Milosevic clung to poweruntil 2001, cracking down on the opposition and dissident groups whom he painted astraitors during the NATO air campaign. Milosevic still had supporters in Serbia, andas long as he refused to cede his authority, he had enough loyalists in thegovernment who refused to prosecute him in the interest of maintaining stability.

One of the reasons Milosevic refused to cede power was the very real fear thatregime change in Serbia would result in a one-way ticket to The Hague. This isexactly what happened. A few months after Serbia's October 2000 anti-Milosevicrevolution, the new and nominally pro-Western government issued an arrest warrantfor Milosevic, finally sending him to The Hague in June 2001 with a strong push fromNATO. The Milosevic case illustrates the inherent risk an indicted leader will facewhen the government falls in the hands of the opposition.

The case of Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political leader, is also instructivein showing the low level of trust leaders like Gadhafi may place in assurances fromthe West regarding non-prosecution. Serbian authorities arrested Karadzic in July2008 after being on the run for 12 years. He claimed in court proceedings at theICTY that he was given assurances by the United States -- denied by Washington --that if he were to step down and make way for a peace process in Bosnia, he wouldnot be prosecuted. This obviously did not happen. In other words, the likelypolitical arrangements that were arrived at to initiate a peace process inBosnia-Herzegovina were wholly disregarded by the ICTY.

Gadhafi is obviously aware of the Balkans precedents. He has no motivation tocapitulate, since that could result in him being sent to The Hague, nor is thereanyone that he can deal with who can hold the ICC in abeyance. In most criminalproceedings, a plea bargain is possible, but this is not simply a matter of a pleabargain.

Regardless of what a country's leader has done, he or she holds political power, andthe transfer of that power is inherently a political process. What the ICC has donesince 2002 -- and the ICTY to an extent before that -- is to make the politicalprocess moot by making amnesty impossible. It is not clear if any authority existsto offer and honor an amnesty. However, the ICC is a product of the United Nations,and the authority of the United Nations lies in the UNSC. Though there is no clearprecedent, there is an implicit assumption that the UNSC would be the entity tooffer a negotiated amnesty with a unanimous vote. In other words, the politicalprocess is transferred from Libya to the UNSC, where any number of countries mightchoose to abort the process for their own political ends. So the domestic politicalprocess is trumped by The Hague's legal process, which can only be trumped by theUNSC's political process. A potentially simple end to a civil war escalates toglobal politics.

And this is not simply a matter of a leader's unwillingness to capitulate ornegotiate. It aborts the process that undermines men like Gadhafi. Without a doubt,most of the men who have surrounded him for years are guilty of serious war crimesand crimes against humanity. It is difficult to imagine anyone around Gadhafi whosehands are clean, or who would have been selected by Gadhafi if their hands weren'tcapable of being soiled. Each of them is liable for prosecution by the ICC,particularly the senior leadership of the military; the ICC has bound their fate tothat of Gadhafi, actually increasing their loyalty to him. Just as Gadhafi hasnothing to lose by continued resistance, neither do they. The ICC has forged thefoundation of Gadhafi's survival and bitter resistance.

It is not a question only of the ICC. Recall the case of Augusto Pinochet, whostaged a coup in Chile against Salvador Allende and presided over a brutaldictatorship. His support was not insubstantial in Chile, and he left power in acarefully negotiated political process. A Spanish magistrate, a minor figure in theSpanish legal system, claimed jurisdiction over Pinochet's crimes in Chile anddemanded that he be extradited from Britain, where Pinochet was visiting, and theextradition was granted. Today the ICC is not the only authority that can claimjurisdiction in such cases, but under current international law, nations have lostthe authority to negotiate solutions to the problem of transferring power fromdictators to representative democracies. Moreover, they have ceded that authoritynot only to the ICC but also to any court that wants to claim jurisdiction.

Apply this to South Africa. An extended struggle took place between two communities.The apartheid regime committed crimes under international law. In due course, anegotiated political process arranged a transfer of power. Part of the agreement wasthat a non-judicial truth commission would review events but that prosecutions wouldbe severely limited. If that transfer of power were occurring today, with the ICC inplace and "Spanish magistrates" loose, how likely would it be that the whitegovernment would be willing to make the political concessions needed to transferpower? Would an agreement among the South Africans have trumped the jurisdiction ofthe ICC or another forum? Without the absolute certainty of amnesty, would the whiteleadership have capitulated?

The desire for justice is understandable, as is the need for an independentjudiciary. But a judiciary that is impervious to political realities can createcatastrophes in the name of justice. In both the Serbia and Libya cases, ICCindictments were used by Western countries in the midst of bombing campaigns tolegitimize their humanitarian intervention. The problem is that the indictments leftlittle room for negotiated settlements. The desire to punish the wicked is natural.But as in all things political -- though not judicial -- the price of justice mustalso be considered. If it means that thousands must die because the need to punishthe guilty is an absolute, is that justice? Just as important, does it serve toalleviate or exacerbate human suffering?

Judicial Absolutism

Consider a hypothetical. Assume that in the summer of 1944, Adolph Hitler hadoffered to capitulate to the allies if they would grant him amnesty. Giving Hitleramnesty would have been monstrous, but at the same time, it would have saved a yearof war and a year of the holocaust. From a personal point of view, the summer of1944 was when deportation of Hungarian Jews was at its height. Most of my familydied that fall and winter. Would leaving Hitler alive been worth it to my family andmillions of others on all sides?

The Nuremberg precedent makes the case for punishment. But applied rigorously, itundermines the case for political solutions. In the case of tyrannies, it meansnegotiating the safety of tyrants in return for their abdication. The abdicationbrings an end to war and allows people who would have died to continue to live theirlives.

The theory behind Nuremberg and the ICC is that the threat of punishment will detertyrants. Men like Gadhafi, Milosevic, Karadzic and Hitler grow accustomed to livingwith death long before they take power. And the very act of seizing that powerinvolves two things: an indifference to common opinion about them, particularlyoutside their countries, and a willingness to take risks and then crush those whomight take risks against them. Such leaders constitute an odd, paradoxical categoryof men who will risk everything for power, and then guard their lives and power witheverything. It is hard to frighten them, and harder still to have them abandon powerwithout guarantees.

The result is that wars against them take a long time and kill a lot of people, andthey are singularly indifferent to the suffering they cause. Threatening them with atrial simply closes off political options to end the war. It also strips countriesof their sovereign right to craft non-judicial, political solutions to theirnational problems. The dictator and his followers have no reason to negotiate and noreason to capitulate. They are forced to continue a war that could have endedearlier and allowed those who would have died the opportunity to live.

There is something I call judicial absolutism in the way the ICC works. It beginswith the idea that the law demands absolute respect and that there are crimes thatare so extraordinary that no forgiveness is possible. This concept is wrapped in anineluctable judicial process that, by design, cannot be restrained and isindependent of any moderating principles.

It is not the criminals the ICC is trying who are the issue. It is the next criminalon the docket. Having seen an older dictator at The Hague earlier negotiate his ownexit, and see that negotiation fall through, why would a new dictator negotiate adeal? How can Gadhafi contemplate a negotiation that would leave him without powerin Libya, when the Milosevic case clearly illuminates his potential fate at thehands of a rebel-led Libya? Judicial absolutism assumes that the moral absolute isthe due process of law. A more humane moral absolute is to remove the tyrant andgive power to the nation with the fewest deaths possible in the process.

The problem in Libya is that no one knows how to go from judicial absolutism to amore subtle and humane understanding of the problem. Oddly, it is the judicialabsolutists who regard themselves as committed to humanitarianism. In a world filledwith tyrants, this is not a minor misconception.

This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution towww.stratfor.com.

It raises serious questions, but it also answers questions I have had about what is their jurisdiction? International Law may sound good but world government does not. I recall that George Bush was unable to travel to Switzerland (allegedly) for fear of arrest. Same could be true for Obama at some point over his handling of the bin Laden operation - shooting the unarmed in the head. Unfortunately committees and conferences do not remove tyrannical dictators. Wars do.

"the International Criminal Court (ICC), which became operational in 2002 in The Hague, Netherlands. The ICC has jurisdiction, under U.N. mandate, to prosecute individuals who have committed war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity. Its jurisdiction is limited to those places where recognized governments are unwilling or unable to carry out their own judicial processes. The ICC can exercise jurisdiction if the case is referred to the ICC prosecutor by an ICC state party signatory or the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) or if the prosecutor initiates the investigation him or herself."

Speaking about a gun control treaty being cooked up at the U.N. in 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “The United States is prepared to work hard for a strong international standard in this area.” That was a major change from just a year before when the Bush administration gave the treaty a big thumbs-down. Now the gun grabbers are back at the U.N. putting the finishing touches on their treaty, with tacit support from the Obama administration.At Human Events, John Velleco writes that the U.N. deal, known as the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT),

“ … will, at the very least, require gun owner registration and microstamping of ammunition. And it will define manufacturing so broadly that any gun owner who adds so much as a scope or changes a stock on a firearm would be required to obtain a manufacturing license.

It would also likely include a ban on many semi-automatic firearms (i.e., the Clinton gun ban) and demand the mandatory destruction of surplus ammo and confiscated firearms.”

Anyone believing such laws will have a positive effect should remember that, since the end of the Clinton Gun Ban in 2003, violent crime rates have fallen 9.8% and the murder rate has fallen 12.3%.

In response to a passage in the treaty that “recognizes” countries’ rights to govern their citizens’ ownership of firearms, Velleco observes, “Americans’ right to keep and bear arms exists whether or not it is ‘recognized’ by some U.N. committee. The right enshrined in the Second Amendment predates our own Constitution, and does not need an international stamp of approval.”

Thankfully, support of two-thirds of the Senate is needed to ratify a treaty, and the proportion of current membership that is pro second amendment precludes this treaty from becoming law. That being said, shame on President Obama and Secretary Clinton for giving credence to a process that might deny Americans their constitutional rights.

This struck me as so incredible that I ran it by a friend in a federal agency who is in a position to know about these things. His "I'm not in a position to comment on that" left me with the clear understanding that he was giving me to understand that the report is true.-- Marc=========================================

The United States is expanding their role in the war on drugs in Mexico, allowing Mexican authorities to stage cross border helicopter raids in the U.S., in addition to staging drones to eavesdrop on cartel’s cell phone communications and to capture video of drug processing labs and smuggling units. While U.S. authorities maintain these are not joint operations, rather Mexican operations staged in U.S. territory, cooperation is increasing despite historical tensions between the two nations.

Emily ChasanSenior Editor.When SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said in June that investors aren’t clamoring for International Financial Reporting Standards, she may have been understating things… a bit. Now, some of the biggest U.S. investor groups are letting the SEC know in no uncertain terms that it should postpone its decision on IFRS and even stop the convergence process between U.S. GAAP and IFRS.

In comment letters to the SEC this week, some big investors and analyst groups had some scathing words about IFRS, claiming, among other things, that the International Accounting Standards Board isn’t independent enough from political interference to set accounting rules for the United States.

Capital Research and Management Co, which manages over $1 trillion, wrote that U.S. GAAP was “clearer, more effective and more advanced” than IFRS in providing the information it needs to make investments. CRMC Chairman Paul Haaga wrote in the letter:

While we support the idea of a consistent set of high quality accounting standards for companies worldwide, unfortunately we do not believe IASB has been effective in achieving this objective. Moreover, IASB’s ability to achieve this objective has been gravely diminished by political influence.

CRMC, which is the investment advisor to the American Funds mutual funds, said it doesn’t expect to benefit from the more comparable reporting IFRS is supposed to provide because the standard is applied so inconsistently around the world, and urged the SEC to retain U.S. GAAP. It also said the convergence process between U.S. accounting rule makers isn’t working and should be stopped.

Investors, analysts, and others, who use financial statement, are the purported beneficiaries of a switch to IFRS, as a single set of accounting rules should make it easier to compare publicly-traded companies around the world. Many CFOs are on record saying they would bear the cost of an IFRS switch if they think investors would benefit.

But even the CFA Institute, which represents over 100,000 portfolio managers, investment analysts and advisors throughout the world expressed doubts, saying it would be “premature” for the SEC to inject IFRS into the U.S. financial system. The CFA Institute said its continued support for IFRS is not unconditional, and that the International Accounting Standards Board needs to ensure its independence and more consistent application of its rules before U.S. companies are required to use them.

After abandoning an earlier plan that would have had U.S. companies using IFRS as soon as 2014, the SEC has said it would make a decision this year about whether companies in the U.S. should move toward the international standard, which is used in more than 100 other countries around the globe.

It occurs to me that if the UN is going to take up action to make sure everyone who deserves statehood is included, any proposal to add Palestine should also add Taiwan. Who represents them? PRC? Let China veto the proposal.

Alternatively, we could amend the proposal to read: Palestine in, U.S.A. out. Then I might vote for it.

It occurs to me that if the UN is going to take up action to make sure everyone who deserves statehood is included, any proposal to add Palestine should also add Taiwan. Who represents them? PRC? Let China veto the proposal.

Alternatively, we could amend the proposal to read: Palestine in, U.S.A. out. Then I might vote for it.

I don't suppose anyone saw Carter's interview on Rachel Maddow. He had a lot to say about the UN and Israel. I was going to look and see if there was any reaction to it, but I thought I would start here.

I don't suppose anyone saw Carter's interview on Rachel Maddow. He had a lot to say about the UN and Israel. I was going to look and see if there was any reaction to it, but I thought I would start here.

Maybe ccp caught it. Is Carter feeling his oats now that his reputation as the worst president in modern history is being taken by Buraq?

To watch a liberal get mugged by reality, do an Internet search for the video of Susan Rice at Tuesday night's Security Council debate on Syria. America's envoy to the United Nations slammed the Russian and Chinese vetoes of a "vastly watered down" resolution that criticized the Assad regime's brutal repression of its own people. Ms. Rice pronounced herself "outraged" at the U.N.'s inaction.

Soon after, on Twitter, @AmbassadorRice vented her views in five messages. "This is a sad day," she wrote. "Most especially for the people of #Syria, but also for the UN Security Council." A few seconds later, she offered a follow-on: "We will not rest until the Council rises to meet its responsibilities."

Good luck with that, Madam Ambassador. Unlike Moammar Gadhafi—a dictator who made so many enemies in the Arab world and beyond that he couldn't count on Moscow or Beijing's U.N. support—Syria's Bashar Assad is a murderer in good authoritarian standing. His security forces have killed at least 2,700 civilians and put thousands more in torture prisons. But this didn't keep the Sino-Russian duo from coming to his aid—the first time they have cast their vetoes together since 2008, when they blocked a resolution condemning Robert Mugabe's human-rights record.

Meanwhile, beyond the confines of Turtle Bay, real steps are being taken against Damascus. The U.S. and the European Union have already adopted sanctions targeting Syria's oil exports, along with the assets of the regime's top officials. Turkey broke its ties with Damascus, and Ankara this week announced military maneuvers along its Syrian border.

So why, except for reasons of masochism or moral abdication, does the Obama Administration insist on obtaining a symbolic and toothless U.N. resolution? In the seven months since the Syrian uprising started, the Security Council hasn't even mustered the votes to issue a press statement. As for the proposed resolution, it did no more than condemn Syria's human-rights violation and encourage an open political process. It included no sanctions. It didn't even contain the threat of sanctions.

The Syrian people will make their own history, with or without the U.N.'s moral imprimatur. An opposition council on the Libyan model recently formed in Istanbul. With each defection of a military conscript or senior officer, the Assad regime grows weaker. Maybe once the lesson delivered at the U.N. this week sinks in, the Obama Administration might take further steps to oust Mr. Assad. Leading from the front would be out of character for this Administration, but so was Ms. Rice's disgust this week with the U.N.

Sleep Well — At the UN, China, Cuba and North Korea Are Watching Over Us All

October 26, 2011 - 8:47 am - by Claudia Rosett

In case you missed it, we’ve just had another shining moment of your United Nations at work — the same UN that the U.S. supports with contributions that last year came to some $7.7 billion.

You remember the United Nations Conference on Disarmament? That would be the Geneva-based UN conclave that recently made news for the utterly perverse reason that it was chaired in August by Cuba, and in July by one of the world’s worst rogue proliferators, North Korea.

Out of such proceedings has now come yet another report, subject of consideration and a draft resolution Oct. 21 by the UN General Assembly’s committee on Disarmament and International Security (also known as the “First Committee“). As is customary at the UN, this draft resolution reaffirms that the Conference on Disarmament is “the sole multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community.” It goes on to lament that as such, this Conference on Disarmament has been gridlocked for years — “unable to commence its substantive work for over a decade” — and hopes for forward motion soon.

Who sponsored this draft resolution? Why, China, Cuba and North Korea.

With friends like that, maybe the best one can say about the UN Conference on Disarmament, the UN’s “sole multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community,” is that it is gridlocked. That may be one small reason to sleep better at night. But in that case, the chief service rendered by the Conference is to provide a UN body that gets chaired by Cuba and North Korea, and then yields UN resolutions lamenting not the monstrosity, but the futility of the exercise. Why do we need this Disarmament Conference at all?

I may not have been clear with my request. I understand that China, Cuba, etc. are in the UN. I even understand that they are commissions that seem to run counter to their history. I don't understand the institutional design that leads to the conclusion that having those countries on these commissions will allow they to dictate the outcome. First, they aren't a majority, even when taken together, on the commission. Second, there are at least three nations, all with veto power, who are permanent members of the Security Council. These three are the US, the UK, and France, the later two of which are also members of the EU.

I don't see, then, given the institutional design of the UN (or at least my understanding of the design) allows the opportunity for the UN to act in a manner against the US and the EU.

"I have this feeling someone may come to regret encouraging GM to provide links and articles that show the UN to be a group running in a direction counter to US interests.

It was not just Cuba, but Libya and Syria were on the human rights commission. And the Obama administration was 'self-reporting' Arizona for checking IDs with cause.

What was the agenda of the UN Oil for Food scandal?

Our pathological science thread chronicles quite a duplicitous agenda coming out of the UN IPCC on manipulated climate data and studies. It wasn't 1 or 2 scientists. It was a movement with an agenda and money, within the UN bureaucracy. Yes the UN would like to have more power and bigger budgets. Yes, they want global taxes and global regulations. I know that sounds like I have a conspiracy problem, but I would only count what they say in their own words. I will put few links down but these are easy to find. I would be far more interested in seeing links that indicate otherwise.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17102 July [2004], Inter Presse news service reported that a top U.N. official was preparing a new study that will outline numerous global tax proposals to be considered by the General Assembly at its September meeting. The proposals will likely include everything from global taxes on e-mails and Internet use to a global gas tax and levies on airline travel. If adopted, American taxpayers could wind up paying hundreds of billions of dollars each year to the United Nations.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is among those leading the charge, having stated that he "strongly supports finding new sources of funding" for the U.N. through global taxes, according to Inter Presse. In fact, Annan made very clear his support for the imposition of global taxes in a 2001 Technical Note that he authored for a U.N. conference. "The need to finance the provision of global public goods in an increasingly globalized world also adds new urgency to the need for innovative new sources of financing," Annan wrote. The Note goes on to describe and evaluate the merits of several global tax proposals.-----

Snopes took on the veracity of a pass around email that says a list of countries like Jordan and Saudi Arabia vote against us 70% of the time and found out the truth was they were voting against us closer to 90% of the time: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/unvote.asp

Part of the problem is that Baraq, Hillary (and her legal advisor Harold Koh) et al positively look to the UN and seek to empower it-- including giving it its own source of tax revenues (e.g. cap & trade). Part of the problem is that by giving the organization legitimacy which it does not deserve, we give it a power in the eyes of our own people-- which gives unearned and undue weight to the various deranged and not infrequently anti-semitic/anit-Israel votes of the General Assembly.

OK, so this is not really an instituional question, but rather a normative one of what constitutes the "good" of the country?

(Incidentally, I am not trying to argue with any of you, Guro, GM, DougMacG, PC. I literally study institutions, so this is my mindset here. I really am just seeking clarification about an institution I know comparatively little about. And, thank you to all of you addressing this line of questioning, by the way.)

OK, so this is not really an instituional question, but rather a normative one of what constitutes the "good" of the country?

(Incidentally, I am not trying to argue with any of you, Guro, GM, DougMacG, PC. I literally study institutions, so this is my mindset here. I really am just seeking clarification about an institution I know comparatively little about. And, thank you to all of you addressing this line of questioning, by the way.)

As a talk shop facilitating communication so that affairs between nations do not unnecessarily get out of hand, the UN is fine. The problems begin as soon as it seeks to become more than that e.g. posturing as some sort of moral arbitrator or voice of "the international community" or mechanism of global governance.

"The principles of the UN as explained in the Charter are to save future generations from war, reaffirm human rights, and establish equal rights for all persons. In addition it also aims to promote justice, freedom, and social progress for the peoples of all of its member states." http://geography.about.com/od/politicalgeography/a/unitednations.htm

I have next to zero respect for the legitamacy or competence of the UN towards those ends, nor am I sure that I even agree with all of them. (Whatever the hell "social progress" is according to the General Assembly of the UN, I suspect I rather strongly disagree.

This might explain the generally snarky tone of this thread towards the UN.

To the extent the UN succeeds in claiming power, US sovereignty is diminished.

Again, I am not necessarily unopposed to the snark. The role of the UN in the attempted prevention of small arms and the related limits to the 2nd Amendment spring to mind here. I just want to understand HOW, or perhaps WHY, the UN now how this reputation. Is it because of a failed, or flawed, design or it the "derailment" more of a normative sense from those of you how feel this way.

I have next to zero respect for the legitamacy or competence of the UN towards those ends, nor am I sure that I even agree with all of them. (Whatever the hell "social progress" is according to the General Assembly of the UN, I suspect I rather strongly disagree.

This might explain the generally snarky tone of this thread towards the UN.

To the extent the UN succeeds in claiming power, US sovereignty is diminished.

When an institution goes off the rails as the UN has, I think it does matter.

OK. So again... has it gone off the rails due to institutional design or normatively? If it is the design, what portion?

It was a utopian concept that was flawed from the beginning and just went south from there. It assumed that every nation would rationally decide issues rather than break into voting blocs. It treats every nation as equally rational and decent.

Again, I am not necessarily unopposed to the snark. The role of the UN in the attempted prevention of small arms and the related limits to the 2nd Amendment spring to mind here. I just want to understand HOW, or perhaps WHY, the UN now how this reputation. Is it because of a failed, or flawed, design or it the "derailment" more of a normative sense from those of you how feel this way.

I have next to zero respect for the legitamacy or competence of the UN towards those ends, nor am I sure that I even agree with all of them. (Whatever the hell "social progress" is according to the General Assembly of the UN, I suspect I rather strongly disagree.

This might explain the generally snarky tone of this thread towards the UN.

To the extent the UN succeeds in claiming power, US sovereignty is diminished.

The "food for oil" corruption leaps to mind as does the endless assaults on Israel. Gee, you'd think they were North Korea or Cuba, except those countries are on the human rights councils. Even when the UN isn't on the wrong side of things, they are more corrupt and criminal in day to day operations than the typical 3rd world hellhole they coddle.

When an institution goes off the rails as the UN has, I think it does matter.

OK. So again... has it gone off the rails due to institutional design or normatively? If it is the design, what portion?

It was a utopian concept that was flawed from the beginning and just went south from there. It assumed that every nation would rationally decide issues rather than break into voting blocs. It treats every nation as equally rational and decent.

I would add that many states in the General Assembly are quite tiny in land mass and or numbers, yet they get the same vote as big states of substance. Indeed they are often dominated by more powerful states and vote as they are told-- think East Europe during the Soviet Empire or states in need of oil financing during the OPEC years. In the conversion of the USA from a confederation to a federation, this was in part dealt with by having a House of Representatives and a Senate. Is the Security Council really an analog to the Senate?

Is there really a shared creed in the UN? NOT HARDLY!

America is the EXCEPTION in that we are born of a Creed, not a race, not a religion, not merely a particular piece of land. The flip side of that exception is that the UN is overwhelmingly made of countries based upon religion, race, ethnicity, and so forth. How can such an assemblage be a moral arbitor?

A point of Bigdog's: "Second, there are at least three nations, all with veto power, who are permanent members of the Security Council. These three are the US, the UK, and France, the later two of which are also members of the EU. I don't see, then, given the institutional design of the UN (or at least my understanding of the design) allows the opportunity for the UN to act in a manner against the US and the EU."

Another great question gets at this further: "OK... what constitutes the "good" of the country?"

Your point about structure and veto power is a good one. I accept that. So why all the hysteria on the right? It seems to me that it is not good to be just one, two or three vetoes away from giving up our sovereignty - and we don't trust any of those three to always do the right thing. One of my own links about the UN wanting global government, global taxes and global regulations actually came from candidate Obama. We (really only speaking for myself) don't even trust all American administrations to do what is in the U.S. interest, much less our best allies in western Europe. As your question reveals, there isn't one mindset in the US of what is in our interest. The short answer from this side in my view is that we most certainly don't want global governance; we don't even like that state powers went to Washington. Already mentioned are other great points, we don't want one sided condemnations of Israel. We don't want tyrannical dictators having any voice or podium much less an equal one. We don't want to expand the legitimacy of things that aren't.

If so-called neutral member states are voting against us 90% of the time, and if we are doing horse trades with China and Russia to keep them from vetoing certain actions, then might there also be times when we are giving away our veto that is needed to support our interest? We certainly do that in Washington!

All this unfortunately seems to focus on the negative aspects of the UN. I would be interested in learning what is happening at the UN that is positive so I would understand why we risk or tolerate all the negatives.

Crafty made a point in particular that I like: "As a talk shop facilitating communication so that affairs between nations do not unnecessarily get out of hand, the UN is fine."

But if that talk is 90% anti-American in direction, why then do we sponsor and participate? Is the other 10% that good? If so, how?

The condemnation of Iraq seemed like one example of good. I list those resolutions below, but what good came out of them? They gave cover for politicians to say they were doing something when they weren't.

I liked a proposal made by Dem Senator Zell Miller and others called an Association of Democracies. Should there not be some requirement of consent of the governed to join with leaders of peace seeking nations? I also liked the one-time type cooperations that Pres. Bush Sr. called the coalition of the willing. Can't we have our allies be people who want to be our allies and vice versa. I don't see how anyone can take lightly the fact that those horribly repressive regimes were sitting on committees judging other people's human rights violations. We stand for nothing IMO if we stand with that! I don't like giving legitimacy to illegitimacy, the soapbox for Hugo Chavez comes to mind but there were so many others, Kruschev pounding his shoe - did that really happen? If not he was still denying in 1960 that the Soviet Union swallowed up Eastern Europe. And we have a peace seeking podium for that. It doesn't make sense to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-banging_incident---------------Iraq's unenforced resolutions in reverse order from the occupation of Kuwait 1990 through the end of 2002, resolutions are clickable at the link: http://www.casi.org.uk/info/scriraq.html

1454 (30 December 2002): Iraq-Kuwait implements revisions to the Goods Review List. See also the accompanying UN press release. 1447 (4 December 2002): Iraq-Kuwait. Extends the oil-for-food programme by 6 months, obliges the council to review the goods review list within one month and asks the Secretary General to produce a report on the adequacy of Iraq's distribution mechamisms within the country and oil-for-food revenues within six months. See the accompanying press release. 1443 (25 November 2002): Iraq-Kuwait. Extends the oil-for-food programme by 9 days only, due to disagreements over US proposals to broaden the Goods Review List. See the accompanying UN press release. See also CASI's press release on the politicisation of the oil-for-food programme. 1441 (8 November 2002): Iraq-Kuwait. Earlier drafts of this resolution are as follows: the US/UK drafts of 2 October 2002, 25 October 2002 and 5 November 2002; the Russian draft and the French draft of 23 October 2002. A collections of critical comments on the resolution can be found on the websites of the Institute for Public Accuracy and Eclipse review. Post-vote statements by the US, UK, France, Russia and China are available from the Global Policy Forum 1409 (14 May 2002): Iraq-Kuwait. Extends the oil-for-food programme by six months, and introduces a new import procedure. Only items on the annexed Goods Review List (GRL) are to be reviewed by the Sanctions Committee. Official version of the GRL (S/2002/515) are here (on the Unmovic site) and here (on the OIP site). Although the GRL is annexed to a letter from the US ambassador dated 3 May 2002 - before the resolution was even offically passed - it was only released on 14 August 2002. An unofficial version of the "Goods Review List" is also available on the UN Office of the Iraq programme website, in doc (2.2MB) and pdf versions (4.6MB). Some background is provided in the UN Press Release and a News Centre report. See also CASI's press release in response to the resolution (15 May 2002); Statement by Save the Children UK (May 2002); Statements by CAFOD of 16 May 2002 and 27 June 2002; and the analyses of Sarah Graham-Brown, Sanctions Renewed on Iraq (14 May 2002), and Colin Rowat, Iraq Sanctions Saga Continues amid Policy Confusion (10 June 2002). See also the fact sheet from the United States mission to the UN on the "Goods Review List" (14 May 2002). 1382 (29 November 2001): Iraq-Kuwait. Extends the oil-for-food programme by 180 days, commencing Phase XI on 1 December 2001. It also adopts a new "goods review list" (GRL) and procedures for its application to come into force on 30 May 2002. Note that the GRL consists not only of the items actually listed in the annex to the resolution, but also those on the "1051 lists" and those listed within a new 150-page list drawn up by the US. This latter list was an annex to a letter from the US ambassador dated 27 November 2001; a copy sent to CASI can be viewed here. All applications to import goods will have to be reviewed by Unmovic and the UN Office of the Iraq Programme to determine if the proposed imports contain items on the GRL. 1360 (3 July 2001): Iraq-Kuwait. Extends the oil-for-food programme by 150 days to begin Phase X, after no agreement was reached over the new UK proposals for a modified sanctions regime. The subsequent exchange of letters between the UN and Iraq, agreeing to the continuation of the programme under the terms of this resolution, is dated 5 July 2001. The text of the Security Council debates are available for 26 June 2001 and 28 June 2001. CASI's full index of proposals and statements from May to July 2001 is available here. 1352 (1 June 2001): Iraq-Kuwait. Extends Phase IX of the oil-for-food programme by one month only, after there is general agreement that more time is necessary to review the UK's draft resolution (and annex) to change the scope and mode of operation of the sanctions. 1330 (4 December 2000): Iraq-Kuwait. Extends the oil-for-food programme by 180 days, to commence Phase IX. The resolution also allocates another $600m to oil-industry spares, requests exploration into a "cash component" (para. 15), reduces Compensation Fund deductions to 25% (para 12), requests electricity and housing "green lists" (para 10), expresses "readiness to consider" paying Iraq's UN membership dues out of oil-for-food revenue, seeks expanded versions of the existing "green lists" (para 11), and asks the Secretary-General to report on other oil export routes from Iraq. UN Press Release here. 1302 (8 June 2000): Iraq-Kuwait. Begins Phase VIII of "oil for food". The UN's press release is here. Paragraph 8 asks for water and sanitation "green lists". Paragraph 9 extends the oil spare parts permission of SCR 1293. Paragraph 18 calls for the establishment of a team of "independent experts to prepare by 26 November 2000 a comprehensive report and analysis of the humanitarian situation in Iraq, including the current humanitarian needs [...] and recommendations to meet those needs, within the framework of the existing resolutions". According to a UN source, the UK and US insisted upon the final clause of paragraph 18, knowing that the Iraqi government's position would prevent it from cooperating with such an analysis. As a result, there has been no cooperation and no such report has been produced. The BBC's report outlines the politics behind the comprehensive report. AP's report concentrates on the debate around bombing in the "no fly zones". On 30 October, the chair of the group of independent experts mentioned in the resolution was announced as Thorvald Stoltenberg of Norway. 1293 (31 March 2000): Iraq-Kuwait. Doubles permitted oil spare part imports for Phases VI and VII. The UN's press release is here. Paragraphs 53 - 57 of the UN Secretary-General's 10 March 2000 report (S/2000/208) explains the background to this doubling. See CNN's story for mention of some of the politics of the resolution. 1284 (17 December 1999): Iraq-Kuwait. Replaces Unscom with Unmovic, demands Iraqi co-operation on prisoners of war, alters the "oil for food" programme, and discusses the possible suspension of sanctions in ambiguous terms. The statement by Sir Jeremy Greenstock in the Security Council at the introduction of the resolution is here; the full debates in the Council are here; and the UN's press release is here. The UK draft resolution preceding this is here. See also CASI's briefing or its press release. 1281 (10 December 1999): Iraq-Kuwait. Begins Phase VII of "oil for food", to start on 12 December 1999. The report requested in paragraph 9 is S/2000/26. Listen to the BBC's radio story, including an explanation that the previous week-long extensions may have been too short to allow Iraq to sign oil contracts. 1280 (3 December 1999): Iraq-Kuwait. Extends Phase VI to 11 December 1999 due to wrangling over SCR 1284. 1275 (19 November 1999): Iraq-Kuwait. Extends Phase VI to 4 December 1999 due to wrangling over SCR 1284. 1266 (4 October 1999): Iraq-Kuwait. Allows an additional $3.04 billion in oil sales to offset deficits during previous Phases and (possibly) to slow the rise in oil prices. 1242 (21 May 1999): Iraq-Kuwait. Begins Phase VI of "oil for food", to start on 25 May 1999. 1210 (24 November 1998): Iraq-Kuwait. Begins Phase V of "oil for food", to start on 26 November 1998. 1205 (5 November 1998): Iraq-Kuwait. Echoes SCR 1194, demands that the Iraqi government "provide immediate, complete and unconditional cooperation" with inspectors and alludes to the threat to "international peace and security" posed by the non-cooperation. 1194 (9 September 1998): Iraq-Kuwait. "Condemns the decision by Iraq ... to suspend cooperation with [Unscom] and the IAEA", demands that the decisions be reversed and cancels October 1998 scheduled sanctions review. 1175 (19 June 1998): Iraq-Kuwait. Gives Iraq permission to apply to import up to $300 million of oil industry spare parts this Phase to allow it to increase its oil production to the cap set in SCR 1153. 1158 (25 March 1998): Iraq-Kuwait. Continues Phase III but under the enhanced provisions of SCR 1153. 1154 (2 March 1998): Iraq-Kuwait. Commends the Secretary-General for securing commitments from the Iraqi government to fully comply with weapons inspections on his mission to Baghdad, and endorses the memorandum of understanding (S/1998/166) that was signed on 23 February. The mapping of the areas of the eight "presidential sites" by a UN Technical Mission is described in an annexed report to a letter from the Secretary-General of 27 February (S/1998/166/Add.1). The procedures for the inspection of "presidential sites" are laid out in an annex to the letter from the Secretary-General of 8 March 1998 (S/1998/208). This agreement put off US and British bombing threats. 1153 (20 February 1998): Iraq-Kuwait. Agrees to increase the cap on permitted Iraqi oil sales to $5.256 billion per Phase once the Secretary-General has approved an "enhanced distribution plan" for the new revenue. Recognises the importance of infrastructure and project-based purchases. Phase IV eventually begins on 30 May 1998. Resolution passed during Unscom crisis. 1143 (4 December 1997): Iraq-Kuwait. Begins Phase III of "oil for food", to start on 5 December 1997 and welcomes the Secretary-General's intention to submit a supplementary report on possible improvements in the "oil for food" programme. 1137 (12 November 1997): Iraq-Kuwait Rejects Iraqi government's announced intention to prohibit weapons inspections unless the composition of Unscom teams is altered to limit the number of inspectors from the US, and to prohibit Unscom overflights. Imposes travel ban on officials to be lifted when full cooperation resumes. Sanctions review to be in April 1998 if cooperation has been restored. 1134 (23 October 1997): Iraq-Kuwait Reaffirms Iraq's obligations to cooperate with weapons inspectors after Iraqi officials announce in September 1997 that "presidential sites" are off-limits to inspectors. Threatens travel ban on obstructive Iraqi officials not "carrying out bona fide diplomatic assignments or missions" if non-cooperation continues. Sanctions reviews again delayed. 1129 (12 September 1997): Iraq-Kuwait. Alters timing of permitted Phase II oil sales in response to Iraqi government's refusal to sell oil until its Distribution Plan was approved by the UN. 1115 (21 June 1997): Iraq-Kuwait. "Condemns the repeated refusal of the Iraqi authorities to allow access to sites" and "[d]emands that [they] cooperate fully" with Unscom. Suspends the sanctions and arms embargo reviews (paragraphs 21 and 28 of SCR 687) until the next Unscom report and threatens to "impose additional measures on those categories of Iraqi officials responsible for the non-compliance". 1111 (4 June 1997): Iraq-Kuwait. Begins Phase II of "oil for food", to start on 8 June 1997. 1060 (12 June 1996): Iraq. On Iraq's refusal to allow access to sites designated by the Special Commission. 1051 (27 March 1996): Iraq. Establishes mechanism for long-term monitoring of potentially "dual use" Iraqi imports and exports, as called for by SCR 715. 986 (14 April 1995): Iraq New "oil for food" resolution, allowing $1 billion in oil sales every 90 days. Memorandum of understanding signed by UN and Government of Iraq on 20 May 1996; Phase I begins on 10 December 1996. The details of implementation, requested in paragraph 12, are here. 949 (15 October 1994): Iraq-Kuwait. "Condemns recent military deployments by Iraq in the direction of ... Kuwait", demands an immediate withdrawal and full co-operation with Unscom. According to a spokesman for the US Central Command, the resolution was passed following a threatening buildup of Iraqi forces near the border with Kuwait, and bars Iraq from moving SAMs into the southern no-fly zone. 899 (4 March 1994): Iraq-Kuwait. Allows compensation to private Iraqi citizens who lost assets to the boundary demarcation process. 833 (27 May 1993): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). "Welcomes ... the successful conclusion of the work of the [Boundary Demarcation] Commission". The Iraqi National Assembly recognised the territorial integrity and political independence of the State of Kuwait, within the boundaries laid down by the Boundary Demarcation Commission, on 10 November 1994, and its decision was ratified in a decree signed by Saddam Hussein on the same day. 806 (5 February 1993): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Arms UNIKOM to prevent border incursions by Iraq. 778 (2 October 1992): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Deplores Iraq's refusal to implements SCRs 706 and 712 and recalls Iraq's liabilities. Takes steps to transfer funds (including Iraqi assets overseas) into the UN account established to pay for compensation and humanitarian expenses. 773 (26 August 1992): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Responds to a report on progress by the UN Iraq-Kuwait Boundary Demarcation Commission and notes that the Commission "is not reallocating territory between Kuwait and Iraq". 715 (11 October 1991): Iraq (PDF). Approves the plans of Unscom and the IAEA, including for long term monitoring. Iraq agreed to the monitoring system established by this resolution on 26 November 1993. 712 (19 September 1991): Iraq (PDF). Rejects the Secretary-General's suggestion that at least $2 billion in oil revenue be made available for humanitarian needs; instead allows total sale of $1.6 billion. Eventually rejected by Government of Iraq. 707 (15 August 1991): Iraq (PDF). Condemns Iraq's non-compliance on weapons inspections as a "material breach" of Resolution 687, and incorporates into its standard for compliance with SCR687 that Iraq provide "full, final and complete disclosure ... of all aspects of its programmes to develop" prohibited weaponry. Also grants permission for Unscom and the IAEA to conduct flights throughout Iraq, for surveillance or logistical purposes. 706 (15 August 1991): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Decides to allow emergency oil sale by Iraq to fund compensation claims, weapons inspection and humanitarian needs in Iraq. The text of the debates on this resolution in the Security Council is available here. 705 (15 August 1991): Iraq (PDF). "Decides that ... compensation to be paid by Iraq ... shall not exceed 30 per cent of the annual value of the exports". 700 (17 June 1991): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Approves the Secretary-General's guidelines on an arms and dual-use embargo on Iraq and calls upon states to act consistently with them. Paragraph 5 of this resolution makes the 661 committee responsible for the on-going monitoring regime, thus ensuring that it would retain a role in the long-term relationship between the UN and Iraq. 699 (17 June 1991): Iraq (PDF). Approves the Secretary-General's plan for Unscom and the IAEA and asks for support from Member States. 692 (20 May 1991): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Establishes the UN Compensation Commission and asks the Secretary-General to indicate the maximum possible level of Iraq's contribution to the Compensation Fund. 689 (9 April 1991): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Approves the Secretary-General's report on the United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM). 688 (5 April 1991): Iraq (PDF). "Condemns the repression of the Iraqi civilian population" in the post-war civil war and "[d]emands that Iraq ... immediately end this repression". 688 is occasionally claimed to provide the legal basis for the American and British "no fly zones". These claims are incorrect both because 688 does not invoke Chapter VII of the UN Charter, a necessary condition for the use of force, and because it does not authorise specific measures to uphold human rights in Iraq, such as "no fly zones". The BBC has an outline of the "no fly zones" here. The UK Select Committee on Defence addresses the legal issue briefly here. 687 (3 April 1991): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Declares effective a formal cease-fire (upon Iraqi acceptance), establishes the UN Special Commission on weapons (Unscom), extends sanctions and, in paragraphs 21 and 22, provides ambiguous conditions for lifting or easing them. Described as a "Christmas tree", because "so much was hung on it". The fourth preambulary clause, on "the need to be assured of Iraq's peaceful intentions", has been referred to as the "Saddam Hussein clause" as it has been used to link the continuation of sanctions with the survival of the present Iraqi regime. The text of the debates on this resolution in the Security Council is available here. 686 (2 March 1991): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Affirms the "independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq" and sets out terms for a cease-fire. The use of force remains valid to fulfil these conditions. 685 (31 January 1991): Iraq-Islamic Republic of Iran (PDF). 678 (29 November 1990): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). "Authorizes Member States ... to use all necessary means" to bring Iraq into compliance with previous Security Council resolutions if it did not do so by 15 January 1991. 677 (28 November 1990): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Concerned by Iraq's attempts to "alter the demographic composition of ... Kuwait and to destroy the civil records". 676 (28 November 1990): Iraq-Islamic Republic of Iran (PDF). 674 (29 October 1990): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). "Reminds Iraq that ... it is liable for any loss ... as a result of the invasion ... of Kuwait". 671 (27 September 1990): Iraq-Islamic Republic of Iran (PDF). 670 (25 September 1990): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Strengthens and clarifies the embargo; confirms that it applies to aircraft. France and the USA disagree on whether 670 requires 661 approval for flights without cargo. Paragraph 12 of the resolution also invokes the possibility of unspecified "measures" against states that evade the sanctions regime. This paragraph seems to have been directed against Jordan and Sudan in particular. It caused disquiet within delegations, as the United Nations Charter has traditionally been interpreted as only permitting the Security Council to impose such measures against the state responsible for a breach of or threat to the peace. 669 (24 September 1990): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Asks the Sanctions Committee to consider requests for economic assistance from countries harmed by the sanctions on Iraq. 667 (16 September 1990): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Protests "the closure of diplomatic and consular missions in Kuwait". 666 (13 September 1990): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). "Decides [to] ... keep the situation regarding foodstuffs ... under constant review", giving the Security Council responsibility for determining when "humanitarian circumstances" had arisen. The text of the debates on this resolution in the Security Council is available here. 665 (25 August 1990): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Imposes a shipping blockade by calling for the use of "such measures ... as may be necessary" to enforce the maritime embargo. In effect, this resolution reassigns some of the practical responsibility for monitoring compliance with sanctions away from the UN machinery, in the form of the 661 committee, and to the States imposing the naval blockade. 664 (18 August 1990): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Demands that Iraq release "third state nationals". 662 (9 August 1990): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Decides that Iraq's annexation of Kuwait is "null and void". 661 (6 August 1990): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Imposes comprehensive sanctions on Iraq and establishes a sanctions committee (the "661 committee") in paragraph 6 to monitor them. Paragraphs 3 and 4 drawn from those of SCR 253. 660 (2 August 1990): Iraq-Kuwait (PDF). Condemns the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and demands Iraq's immediate and unconditional withdrawal.

I do not understand, however, how you jumped to this conclusion: "I don't see how Bigdog you take lightly the fact that those horribly repressive regimes were sitting on committees judging other people's human rights violations."

Bigdog, I'm sorry. I updated my post. The personal reference was not helpful in making my point, especially when it is wrong. Plenty of other people took those appointments lightly, including the majority of nations! I hate when people ascribe to me what I didn't say. Now it reads:

"I don't see how anyone can take lightly the fact that those horribly repressive regimes were sitting on committees judging other people's human rights violations. We stand for nothing IMO if we stand with that!"

I took the impression as Crafty expressed it. Actual quote: "I don't see, then, given the institutional design of the UN (or at least my understanding of the design) allows the opportunity for the UN to act in a manner against the US and the EU."

My view is that the UN IS acting against the US by elevating Cuba, Libya and Syria, and we have guilt in it all by our full knowledge and continuing voluntary association. -------http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/2678521.stmMonday, 27 January, 2003, 16:28 GMTShould Libya chair UN Human Rights Commission?Libya has been voted chairman of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, despite opposition from the United States and human rights groups.

The country was nominated by African countries and elected by a clear majority, despite the US's insistence that it will not endorse Libya's chairmanship.

The Commission, the UN's main human rights watchdog, oversees complaints of abuses worldwide, but it has been widely condemned as a toothless body.

The vote has highlighted what many see as a flaw in the way the body is set up. Libya's human rights record has been heavily criticised in the past.

The appointment has been staunchly defended, however, by the son of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, who said it could embarrass middle eastern governments into improving their human rights record. ------------The Bush administration was 'opposed' but had no veto. That IMO answers the point of how the UN can act in a manner against the US. They most certainly did (IMHO).

I understand how international stature helps the rulers in places like Libya and Syria, but what are WE doing there? No one would talk to us otherwise?

I am known for my botched analogies and here we go again... If Charles Manson or a current KKK wizard was the chairman of the membership screening committee at the west texas country club and Rick Perry strongly opposed that but kept on golfing, hunting, dining and socializing there, are we okay with that? It's okay because everyone else in the community belongs there too or because there is no other club available? No. It's not okay and he would not survive a second under scrutiny.

Despite this: "Again, I am not necessarily unopposed to the snark." The role of the UN in the attempted prevention of small arms and the related limits to the 2nd Amendment spring to mind here. I just want to understand HOW, or perhaps WHY, the UN now how this reputation. Is it because of a failed, or flawed, design or it the "derailment" more of a normative sense from those of you how feel this way.

And this:

"...has it gone off the rails due to institutional design or normatively?"

And this: "I don't understand the institutional design that leads to the conclusion that having those countries on these commissions will allow they to dictate the outcome."

And this:"I really am just seeking clarification about an institution I know comparatively little about. And, thank you to all of you addressing this line of questioning, by the way.)"

And this:

"Could you you do me a favor and tell me what the UN's ambitions are, without the US or the EU? (This is a serious question. Since the US, UK and France are all permanent SC members with veto power, I am not sure what you mean.)"